BNOC promotes sports medicine

SHARE | Monday, 21 March 2016 | By Ontametse Sugar

Serufho

The Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) hosted the first Sports Medicine course for health practitioners in the country who came from different health institutions. The course took place in a duration of four days as from Monday the 13th of March to Thursday the 17th of March. Upon completion all the participants were awarded certificates. The course was facilitated by National Sports Director Dr Lesedinyana Odiseng and Leapetswe Malete. BNOC Committee Chief Executive Officer Tuelo Serufho said that he hoped the health practitioners have learnt something that will help them in their careers and in dealing effectively with sport cases.

Acting BNOC President Botsang Tshenyego said having adopted the long term athlete development program a long term learning program is also important, and as such thanking the Olympic Solidarity for seeing it fit to sponsor the workshop and support Botswana. “It is not easy to attract sport experts in Botswana because it is very much recreational, and with the interest shown by medical practitioners we believe we will be together for a much longer time,” he said. One of the course participants Noreen Chihumbiri-a Physiotherapist said that the course has been very beneficial to them because they deal mostly with sports people. She said that among the topics that they were taught in the four days of the course, the one that struck her was the CPR because off late there has been a number of deaths increase in sports. “We hope we will be able to reduce the number of deaths on and off the field of sports people,” she said.

Dr Thusang Gure who is a Medical Officer in Orthopaedics in Princess Marina Hospital said the course was very interesting and that they really got enlightened. He also said they had interesting topics like taping because he used to think that was just a useless thing. “I gained knowledge on how to use it depending on the injury of the athlete,” he said. Gure said that they were able to learn that sports medicine is different from general medicine because sport medicine doesn’t use drugs prescriptions that much because of cases of doping, while for general cases drugs are easily administered. He said it was eye opening to know more about doping because it has always been lame as to how they perceived it before. He said they attended the course because they are availing themselves to boost the athletes in making sure that they perform well. He said the course was very relevant for them and it will be ideal if they can get more of those.

With the reality of sudden deaths in sports now alarming, Gure said there are certain diagnoses like cardiac myopathy where because of the genes that someone got from the parents they get to have the contractions of the heart as they train. He said they are still learning their traits and on how to deal with them because an athlete is supposed to be an ideal person with a good heart and good health “That is why we need more of these to be equipped with what we can do to help athletes,” he said. He said one thing that is a problem to the athletes locally is because since most of them are not professional, they go to work in the morning but train for a few hours, and those are the things that harm their health. He said sometimes coaches push athletes too hard because they do not also understand injuries that much and the serious health issues they might cause. He said it is time for joined efforts by all stakeholders in sports.